What's your favorite Video Game Voice Overs...
 

Every few months people ask about soundtracks and other things but I never see anyone asking about Voice Work. When I open instruction booklets one of the 1st things I look for is who did what voices. It seems like many famous actors are getting into video game VO work to either voice characters they played in the movie or to voice original Game characters. Mind you, there was time whe doing Voice Work was considered "a crap gig" and "beneath" most actors. But that has certainly changed. I work in a field that uses Voicework so this topic is really interesting to me.

So what are your favorite Video Game VO's and/or your favorite VO actors.

Here are my pick(s):

Tony Jay...(The Elder God in Soul Reaver)
Simon Templeman... (Kain in Legacy of Kain series
Patrick Stewart...(Professor Xavier, X-Men games)
HALO I and II...(The Grunts, The Marines, Cortana, and others)
Keith David...(Spawn and the disgraced Elite in HALO II) :up:


more to come...

Michael Bell - Raziel, Legacy of Kain series

I didn't mention him above but he was never forgotten. :up:

I hate that this site won't let you put all caps on the first line!

GTA:VC

The entire cast of SSX Tricky.

Maybe this doesnt qualify but, I've always enjoyed the guy in "Metal Slug" who announces the weapons you pick up.

"RAAAWKIT LAAAWNCHER!" :lol:

Bill Farmer & Nick Jameson

Also, John DiMaggio in anything.

The announcer in Killer Instinct:

"ULTRRRRAAAAAAA COMBOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!"

Samuel L Jackson as Officer Tenpenny(sp) in GTA : San Andeas

Not one person, but the collected voice work on Riddick: Butcher Bay. They really did a great job.

I was also really impressed by the girl they got to replace Sarah Michelle Gellar on the Buffy games. She was better in some regards than SMG herself.

Kratos from God of War
Michael Ironside as Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell series
David Hayter as Solid Snake in Metal Gear Solid series
Garrett from the Thief series
Duke Nukem
the "toasty" guy from the early Mortal Kombats

Personally I like the unsung heroes of the Voice acting world and not the film actors. Sure famous reccognizable voices are great and I thought hearing bruce willis was nice and all. But in the US voice acting is still quite beneath acting compared to the huge voice acting japanese market, and it will probably never reach that status. More film actors are doing voice acting for games because of the increase movie-game tie-ins thats all the rage like LOTR, Harry Potter, Narnia, The Incredibles, and so on. However there are quite a few good US VA's, my favorites are:

Dr. Naomi Hunter in MGS, Emma Emmerich in MGS2, Alex Roivas in Eternal Darkness, Sheena in Tales of Symphonia, countless others - done by Jennifer Hale

Liquid Snake in MGS, Kratos in TOS, tons of other roles in Monkey Island, Grim Fandango - Cam Clarke

All Killer 7 voice actors. All Eternal Darkness actors, All Metal Gear Solid actors. Too many to name but incidentlally, they all share 80% of the same VA's :), maybe thats why.

And of course Charles Martinet for the "woohoo's!" of Mario, Luigi, Wario, Waluigi.

Whoever does Yangus' voice in Dragon Quest VIII (majority of these voices are good too).

I thought all of the voice-over in Half-Life 2 was fantastic.

I by no means meant to ingore lesser known Voice Over Artists and I don't think the thread title implied anything that would exclude "no name" performers. I'm just not as familiar with them so i didn't list any right off the bat. But you can rest assured they have my respect.

The announcer in "Unreal Tournament-Liandri Conflict" for XBox. Everything in "Half-Life" for the pc. and "Halo".


Kenny J.